Thursday

What I mean by ways are tools and tricks which help in your quest to make money online.

See most products, such as e-books, software and membership sites, cost big money. There are cheap and free products available, however, for the first time or cash strapped internet marketer which are worth looking at.

Websites - the cheapest - free - way to get a website is to put up a blog or free page such as Squidoo or Hubpage. I have a list of free blogs here which are worth looking at. A note: Some free blog sites go up and down, so be aware you may lose your site unexpectedly - which is why I use several free blogs rather than just one.

Squidoo and Hubpages aren't going anywhere. Both have high page ranks and lots of organic traffic.

Advertising - spreading the word about your blog or website can be done through social networking (free), directory submissions (many are free), article marketing (always free), blog commenting (free) and RSS submissions (free). PPC should only be done when the ad copy is perfect and the landing page fool proof. Otherwise, you risk throwing away your money.

Have a domain name but not a website? Point your domain to a blogger site. I do it all the time and it cuts out a monthly hosting fee. Sure, the blogger sites are limited and not very original, but let's say you have a dozen domains you are not sure will monetize or not? Why pay 5.00 a month for hosting space when you can try a website for free?

What can I sell? Go sign up with Clickbank, Commission Junction and individual offers on the net. Write a blog about a product and stick a banner for the product on the site and sprinkle in some Adsense ads. Now spend your time writing good content and marketing with free methods.

Everything I just described above is free. Yes, you may not make four figures a day, but you can sell one or two Clickbank products a month per site (very easy to do) and start making 100 - 400.00 extra a month. That puts you ahead of about 99% of the internet marketers out there.

Wednesday

Two new giveaways for you to try out. Both offer lots of free stuff for download.

You know how giveaways work..

My own strategy is to do a few giveaways a quarter then back off. Why? Because many of the gifts get relabeled and pushed through multiple giveaways several times. I don't like to download the same product multiple times, so I drop out for few months before visiting another.

Both of these giveaways are running for a couple of weeks from today, so get in now and get your stuff before they end.

The Systems Giveaway - This one is different. It runs on a Wordpress blog rather than through the traditional giveaway software platform. Interesting concept.

Daddy's Birthday Giveaway has received a lot of hype the past few weeks. An infamous internet marketer is turning 40 and having a big giveaway blowout. Neat strategy.

I spent the morning searching the web for ANYONE who actually bought Google Shadow and had a review. Nearly every review for Google Shadow is a sales letter with rehashed advanced sales copy. Nothing new.

So I had to do some more research about Google Shadow to bring you this post..

First..

Here are some facts:

- Most ebooks are bought and the methods described within are never put to use. - Most ebook buyers don't employ the stuff in ebooks because - "it is too hard", - "is too hard to understand" or - "requires more time and resources than they have available".

What Google Shadow is..

A system to make a whole bunch of AdWords campaigns for different affiliate products, primarily from Clickbank, but also other vendors.

The Google Shadow system is online software as well as a bunch of the usual "step by step, hold your hand, BS" that every other e-book claims to have.

Google Shadow is also access to an online community and support site (much like Google Shadow author's other product - Google Assassin).

Google Shadow costs a one time charge and monthly access charge there after.

Naturally, there are additional charges and levels for buyers who want to spend more.

Google Shadow is NOT an easy system to put in place. If you have not been successful with Google AdWords in the past, you will most likely have no success with Google Shadow.

Unless you have time, an hour or more per campaign, you will fail with Google Shadow miserably.

You must have an AdWords account to use Google Shadow which means you must have a credit card with funds, to create campaigns.

And you must have a lot of funds to create the level of campaigns described in the Google Shadow system to make the kind of money promised - $100.00 a day or more.

Misusing Google Shadow, and any other system using AdWords for affiliate marketing, will leave you bankrupt quickly with AdWords campaign costs. They never tell you that in the sales letters or reviews do they?

I would not recommend buying Google Shadow unless you fully intend to deploy the system, have the time to make it work and have the funds to support it.

If not, you can always do article marketing using free websites like Squidoo, Blogger and others. It works, maybe not as fast as the gurus claim their system does, but it works for lots of other people.

Finally, remember this! Most Clickbank "make money online products" are not sold with AdWords ads - they are sold to opt-in email lists.

Get Aweber, join a Giveaway, and start building your list if you really want to make some money off of Clickbank..

Also, check out Brad Callen's PPC Webspy (its free) and find out what Pay Per Click suckers are paying Google for their campaigns.

I have heard it is another take on the direct linking strategy of Google Cash..

And it also involves CPA which is something Chris has been touting since his last product.

Chris also likes review sites, which I think is that his product after Google Assassin was about. But I stopped buying Chris' products after Google Assassin much like I stopped reading Stephen King books; they became too repetitive.

I like these types of subjects because the revenue per click or related affiliate product pays well. For instance, some lawsuit related adsense clicks pay $20.00 to 30.00 each. One click a website a week and I can make $100.00 a month. Not bad and not too hard to pull in.

With these four good topics, let's do some research.

For instance, don't take too broad a topic. Instead take what marketers call "the long tail" approach.

Weight loss can be broken down into diets, diet products, diet plans, and so on.

Layout for Adsense on your Blogger blog. Adsense placement is a funny beast. I listen to some of the experts and do what they say and other times I do what I want. I generally place one text only banner across the top, a 600 x 160 text only down the side and then decide whether to incorporate another 250 x 250 into the article at the end or at the bottom of the page.

Regardless, I change out my adsense ads frequently i.e. moving links in place of banners, etc.

I "generally" never use graphic ads, only text. Although on entertainment sites I will use graphics to mix things up and add some candy to the appearance.

Add a stats counter to your blog to track visitors, use Statcounter. Its free.

Select one product and include it in your blog either as a mention in a post or as a banner ad someplace.

Go to ezinearticles. Create a profile and write ten generic articles about your subject market. Generic means things like "What is Nutrisystem?", "Will Nutrisystem work for me?", "How does Nutrisystem work?" and so on.

In your profile, point back to your blog. You can create two more default profiles with ezinearticles.com. You can either create another profile for another niche, which is what I do, or edit your existing profile to point to one of your other related blogs.

Make sure that your write ten articles for each niche blog site though!

Go back to your blog. Add an RSS button. After you have installed it, click it and add your blogs to Google, Yahoo and Bloglines. This will get your blogs crawled and added to the search engines in the next few days.

(Do you see the trend here? Blogger, ezinearticles, Allscoop.. they are all free. There is no reason to shell out money yet, you have not made any to spend).

Submit your blogs feeds using RSS.

Go and bookmark your sites. I have a whole entry on social bookmarking which is worth reading here.

Bookmarking builds backlinks and will gather some traffic, but only over time.

Next, go search for ring directories on google. Join at least one for each subject market blog you have, i.e. weight loss, money, etc. Add the ring code and you will get traffic, sometimes more than you think.

Finally, add your blog to Blogcatalog and MyBlogLog. Both will send some traffic your way. There are other similar sites out there worth looking at later.

If you want, build a Hubpage and Squidoo lens for each blog as well. It helps with backlinks, PR rank and traffic.

Now, make sure your articles are getting published to ezinearticles.com and your blog entries are posting on blogger and move on.

Find three more niche markets and start building blogs, bookmarks, articles and traffic.

All in all, each blog will take you about 2-3 hours or setup and writing, depending upon how long it take you to write articles and blog entries.

In a month's time, I generally crank out about 25 blogs and a suitable number of articles for each blog. I set a goal to write one article every morning, another during the day and one more before bed. So I can get a bunch done in one week.

For blogs, sometimes I will set one up a day, other times one every three days.

Here is a result of what one of these blogs I describe looks like.. This site is new and received about 10 unique hits a day. That will grow as related articles are moved about the internet and backlinks grow.

What are results?

OK, most of my blogs end up, after a month or so, getting 40-50 unique visitors a day and they grow from there.

Most of my blogs get at least one Adsense click a day and I can usually sell one Clickbank product a month. So making $30-50 a month per blog is not that hard.

I usually spend one day a week doing what I can maintenance which is optional. Things like monitoring adsense ad effectiveness, Clickbank product clicks and so forth. If something is not moving, I may drop it and add something else. I also add more bookmarks and dress a blog up if it is getting more traffic.

No, this is not exciting stuff and will not earn you a four figure affiliate check every month. But making a 100.00, 200.00 or more check from Google might land you here. And is worth the work from home.

Comment or email me if you have any questions or comments about how this works.

Thursday

I have more than a few websites with Amazon links on them. My Amazon links fall into different categories..

Static - have a related product picture and description on the page. Moving - random related products on page. Suggestion - blog post with suggested book or product included in review.

I have one blog which is only Amazon with some ads. The site reviews and promotes a camera I purchased. So far, the ads have paid for the domain name. The hosting was free. But Amazon has been a dog. No sales, few clicks.

I checked all of my sites with Amazon ads and in the past 30 days even click thrus have dropped.

I have one site that easily generated 10-12 Amazon orders a month. Recent numbers for the past three months - 0.

So what's up?

Here is my theory.

Amazon is a luxury. People are out of work or hurting for money. Amazon purchases, along with Starbucks and expensive wine are out. Making your own coffee and drinking super market wine is up.

Which means that Amazon has been replaced with Walmart, discount book stores, thrift stores and plain not buying anything.

What can you do with it? Once installed, this app will ad an information bar to every google ad on Google Search. Click it and it shows the keyworks used for that ad and the ad spend estimate. Very neat for keyword research and planning even if you do not use AdWords or Pay Per Click.

Wednesday

If you listen to the blogging experts, especially those who tout "make money online with blogging" they almost every time knock blogger. That's cool.. I mean they have to have something to knock around, right?

Here's the deal.. I use Blogger for a bunch of my blogs and will continue to do so. Well until Google figures out they don't want my unique content and would rather do something else to make billions a year.

My quick reasons for using Blogger

- Blogger is easy to use. I can set up a blog in minutes. - Blogger has a limited number of templates, yes, but I can still get my original and unique content up faster than any other system out there. Squidoo, Hubpages, even Wordpress. - Blogger lets me put Adsense ads on any blog I make. Wordpress hosted blogs do not. Neither does blog.com, blogster, etc. - Blogger does not care if my blog is commericial or personal. A blog is content and brings traffic to the hosting provider. Separating commercial from personal is what the Internet Service Providers tried with access in the 90's. It failed (take it from me; I ran an ISP for 8 years). - Blogger is free and allows me to make any number of blogs on variations of a keyword or phrase quickly. No other blog platform can beat that claim. - Blogger has a huge network. This is good (organic traffic) and bad, but it has helped more than hurt me.

I know. Any day now this blog and others may disappear. But it won't be for money. Blogger is owned by Google who now owns Northern California the last time I checked. The real estate alone will finance the blog!

Tuesday

If you are new to internet marketing and want to make some money online, you may have signed up for a product you found during a random web search. Maybe a "Make Money 101 Guide" or something similar.

When you downloaded the product, you joined an email list and have been receiving a few emails from the author of the ebook you downloaded.

The emails mention different topics, but one topic keeps coming up, "Giveaways"."Winter Giveaway starts today!" or "Join the Valentines Giveaway" or something similar.

Sound familiar?

What is a giveaway and why should you care?

If you are new to all of this, a giveaway is an event where free ebooks, software, tools and what not are given away by the authors to anyone who wants them and has an email account. Most of the ebooks have titles like "How to make money with XXX" or "Five ways to build traffic, lists, etc".

Many of the ebooks are Private Label Rights (PLR) of other people's work which an enterprising author has rewritten and rebranded.

Why would anyone do this?

The purpose of a giveaway, for a few other people is to build a list. An opt-in list.

When someone downloads that free ebook on "Using Squidoo" or "Free Wordpress Plugins", they have to submit their email address and name to a mailing list. A smart marketer uses that list to build their sales. How?

By emailing the members of their list once a day or a few times a week a marketer can tell their list about a great new affiliate product which have just been released. Or maybe about a post on their blog which promotes another product.

Either way, they now have a list of customers interested in affiliate marketing products.

Most affiliate marketers participating in giveaways use Aweber for their autoresponder. Yes, if you are broke, you could use gmail or yahoo and painstakeningly edit, send and manage an mail list by hand. And deal with spam complaints and removal headaches. Aweber does all of that for you. That is why so many marketers use Aweber to manage email opt-in lists. Check it out and see the features and you will agree it is worth the $20.00 a month fee.

Here are a sample giveaway to try out..

When you go to this giveaway, they will ask you to register your name and email address for a login to the giveaway.

After you respond to the confirmation email, you can then download as many free products as you wish. There is no charge; the only cost is your email address and agreement to join a mailing list. At any time, you can opt out of the email list.

After you have seen a few giveaways, you might want to try writing or rewriting your own PLR ebook and contributing to a giveaway. It is a great way to build your own email opt in list and hopefully, use that list to start making money online.

How to get traffic to your blog or website. These are real tips that work, not some rehash from an ebook somebody copied from somewhere else!

I have several websites. Most are blogs which I update weekly. The goal of all my sites is to make money in one fashion or another. The only way to make real money on the internet is to drive lots of traffic to your site.

This works for AdSense or other ad earnings..

For affiliate sales..

To add to your opt-in mailing list..

Most of my sites' traffic fall into these three categories...

1) 100-500 hits a day2) 15-100 hits a day3) Less than 10 hits a day

Surprisingly, most of my revenue comes from the middle group. Why? Because those are very narrow niche sites which answer one or two single questions for internet searchers. When they get to my site, the either find their answer or click on a related ad.

To do this, you need traffic.

The best traffic is free and related to your niche site.

Best Traffic

1) Social networks such as Digg, Stumblr and Reddit.

Write a good post, post it to Digg. Get traffic. Sometimes you can realistically pick up 40 or 50 unique hits for a normal article. I had one bag 40,000 uniques, but that was a wild curve I will probably never duplicate.

2) Social bookmarks

Del.icio.us, Backflip, Furl, Propeller, etc.

I probably pick up 5% of my daily traffic from bookmark links. The only problem is many of the links were made months ago. Social bookmarking is long term traffic, not suddent despite what the ebooks say.

3) Directories

There are two types of directories. One type is for submitting URL's to. These are for buidling backlinks and result in very little actual traffic other than organic search engine generated traffic.

The other are webring directories. I love these things as they generate as much as 50% of my traffic in certain niches. The key is to have a very narrow niche, like American coin collecting for instance, which will have a community of like minded sites. It also pays to build your own webring and have others join.

4) Comment and cross posting

Blogs benefit from these immensely. Write a good post. Comment on a related blog, more is better, like 10 related blogs. Wait for the traffic. I get some pretty good traffic, about 20% from related blogs and cross posting. Much of it is a surprise. I will see a spike and check it out. This traffic usually takes time, but is worth the work.

5) Organic traffic

Organic traffic is built entirely through key word searches. For blogs, never post an article which does not have a keyword phrase for the title. For instance, our coin collecting analogy: "How much is a 1921 Morgan silver dollar worth?" will get far more organic traffic than "The wonders of the Morgan dollar".

And never post an article with a keyword title that you have not researched first on AdWords.

Check your stats for a website and see how much is keyword generated. I can get 20-50% of my traffic through keyword generated searches so make those article titles and webpage titles count.

Those are my five ways to get traffic to a website or blog. There is no secret bullet for instant traffic unless you get real lucky through some fluke. Most traffic is generated over time and with work and patients. But you can buld a traffic stream of 100 unique visitors a day with a little work.

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